Bayou Remedy

Part 49

Itzel shook his head as Eztli insisted it was time to stop running, time to come home. To return to the jungle of their births. He closed his eyes briefly as a wave of grief swamped him. How could he return there? There was nothing there anymore. Nothing but pain and sorrow, nothing but the ashes of his life. The ashes of his love.

How could Eztli ask him to go back to that place knowing that Itzel was so hunted in his homeland, prized for his knowledge and skills at healing? Didn't the bigger male realize that Itzel's presence would do nothing but endanger them, just as it had endangered Meztli and Naya? He couldn't go back. He just couldn't. Not now. Itzel opened his eyes. "No. I'll not be returning."

Eztli scowled, "Why? Has this swamp something our homeland can not provide? Is it so great here as to be preferable to our jungles?" He geastured angrily about the small ramshackle cabin. "What makes you prefer this place to our home? Why do you persist in staying in this hovel? In this cold that saps the energy from your bones to leave you frail and ill? WHY?"

The last word was a shout. The two-leggers skittered back, putting as much distance between themselves and the angry naga as the small room would allow. A quick glance told Itzel that Martha had regained possession of the tiny lightning stick. He shifted in-between Martha and Eztli, lest the female decide to just shoot him and be done with it.

Eztli hissed in irritation as he saw Itzel place himself between him and the two-leggers. "I'll not harm them, brother, lest they attack first. You needn't worry about your precious two-leggers."

Itzel snorted, "It's you I protect, not them. The female is particularly hostile when she feels something of her's is threatened. The male is her child."

Eztli looked skeptical as he frowned at the two small creatures. "She is a little thing, surely she is not so dangerous. Are they the reason you refuse to return?"

Itzel sighed, running a hand through his long ebony locks. "Eztli, you know why I left. Why I can't return. There will only be more deaths if I go back, I am hunted. You know it and I know it, and you are not so strong as to be able to defeat them all yourself. You'll only die... Just like Meztli and Naya."

The big naga flinched at the names, his yellow eyes darkening in rage and grief.  "We need you to come home, brother."

"And what exactly is there for me to return to, dear brother? Why would I ever want to go back? So that I might endanger all those who stand beside me? So that they might die as well, murdered in their own homes? Suffocating as the flames that trap them burn ever higher?" Tears choked his vision, blurring the male before him into an indistinct green mass. "That's the last thing they felt, Eztli! Fire licking at their flesh and knowing there would be no escape. No rescue. He laughed as he set the blaze, did you know that? That bastard laughed as they screamed and then told me that I no longer had any obligation to serve our clan, that the fire would 'cleanse' me of such tedious ties!"

A sob broke past what little control Itzel had retained. "I could do nothing! Nothing against them, no matter what I tried I couldn't break their hold. I could do nothing as they burned the only two people who ever held claim to my heart, and you want me to go back to that? Gods, I can still hear their screams!"

"But you avenged them, did you not? Poisoned the whole war party that very night. I saw the bodies myself, not a single member survived. You avenged Meztli and Naya. Their spirits are at rest, Itzel. It's time for you to come home now."

Itzel turned away from the male, grief swamping him anew. The faint tenor of distant screams echoing in his mind. "I can't! I won't go back! My return will only endanger more of our people. My presence is like a beacon in the night, Eztli, more war parties will come to try and take me. Take my skills. I can't risk that! I won't!"

"And what of our clanmates who sicken and die in your absence? What of those lives? You can't keep fleeing from your obligations! Yes, there are still clans who wish to steal you for their own uses. Yes, there might be more raiding parties in the future. Yes, more of our people might die. But they might also die in an accident. What's to stop them from falling from a tree and breaking their necks? What's to stop them from getting a seemingly insubstantial scrape and dying days later as their very blood rots in their veins, especially when our Medicine Man isn't there to heal them? You need to come home. We need you to come home."

Itzel shuddered at the blatant desperation coating Eztli's words. His people needed him. Needed his skills and were not only willing to accept the risk his presence would bring, but had sent the next head of the clan to track him down and bring him home. Shame and fear assailed him in equal measure at the thought of his people coming to harm in his absence. Meztli would have been saddened by his retreat from those she had known and love. From those who had raised and loved her and given him a sheltered place to claim as his own. A home of his own.

He let go of a shuddering breath and with it his resistance. "Very well. I will return."

Eztli's expression instantly brightened.

Itzel held up a hand to forestall his words "But first we need to make sure my friends here make it safely back to their people. The shaman has already been attacked once and nearly killed. We need to make sure that doesn't happen a second time before we go."

Eztli startled, his head jerking around to focus on the two-leggers. His voice was a near whisper, touched with awe and a bit of trepidation, "Shaman? The male is a shaman?" His eyebrows lowered into a dangerous scowl, "Where are his attendants? His guards? Wait, you said he was attacked, did his attacker kill them?"

"I don't know for sure, but I believe he came into this swamp at the behest of another clan to help them with a small issue regarding their hunts. Whatever the reason, he arrived without attendants and has had none the entirety of his stay here. His mother was the first to come to find him after the attack."

"But why would someone attack a shaman? To what gain?"

Itzel hissed in rage, "That fault I believe lies with me."

"With you?" Eztli was increduous, "How?"

"Those hunting issues I mentioned? That was I. The other two-leggers kept coming closer and closer, scaring game, taking far more than their share. I wanted them to stop so I sabotaged their traps. I never dreamed their solution would be to bring in a shaman and then just leave him in the swamp all alone. Nor had I realized that I was once again being hunted. They used Kisin as bait to lure me in."

"And you went?"

"Of course I went!" Itzel geastured towards Kisin. "Shaman. Unattended. My fault. I couldn't just leave him to be tortured and killed!"

Eztli held up his hands placatingly. "I wasn't condemning you, Brother. Simply asking for clarification. So you went into the trap, obviously you escaped. Is the fiend dead?"

Itzel shifted uneasily, "I couldn't be sure of the kill."

"You couldn't... You're joking, yes?"

Itzel shook his head.

Eztli threw his hands into the air imploring divine intervention.

Itzel glared at him, "I couldn't take the time to check, might I remind you that the shaman had been being tortured at the time?"

"Seriously Itzel? How long could it possibly take to twist a head a tinsy bit further than is natural?"

"You weren't there."

"And the gods know it! If I had been then we'd know for sure that the shaman's enemies are dead and that it would be perfectly safe to send him home with his violent mother! Now we will have to escort them, and I have no idea how to coordinate with their people for a pick up, do you?"

Itzel shook his head, gritting his teeth against words that would do little except harm. He took a deep breath and wave a hand vaguely towards the two-leggers, "I don't, but perhaps they will. The female, Martha, has unique ways of tracking. Perhaps she can somehow tell their people where to meet us."

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So, yeah. Got motivation to start writing this again. Still haven't found my notebook that has my whole plot and ending in it but I'll write what I remember and hopefully find that notebook soon.